Basically any Druid deck that relies on Wild Growth to accelerate their mana curve and get bigger threats out sooner.

Right now, the popular Ramp deck is one that runs double Force of Nature + Savage Roar, and I am finding that it is incredibly powerful. Those spells are very flexible compared to other burst combos, and having two of each means you can use them more freely.

I've marked with * the cards that are flexible spots, which I've filled based on preference and the metagame. I've gone with BGH and Black Knight because of Handlock, Black Knight and Starfall help with Zoolock, and I chose Ragnaros over Cenarius because of freeze mage and Miracle Rogue. The Sunwalkers are also a matter of preference (some run Argent Commander), but I like having the big solid body that's hard to remove.

It's actually very straightforward to play. You mulligan for Wild Growth and Innervate on almost every matchup. You also often want a Harvest Golem in your starting hand, or you might keep a Yeti if you have Wild Growth in your initial cards. The key is being able to drop a Harvest Golem on turn 1 or 2, or a Yeti on turn 3, and just keep building from there.

With Force of Nature + Savage Roar, especially combined with Innervates or other creatures already on the board, a win can come out of nowhere. I've had plenty of games where I've started a turn with 2 minions on the board and realised I actually have 20+ damage for lethal with the combo.

And the double combo means if you need to drop a Force of Nature to remove a big minion you can do so without sacrificing your final burst.

I had one game where the opponent kept themselves at 15 health and dropped a Defender of Argus to create two 6 health taunts - and I still had lethal. I had a 4/5 on board, and used Force of Nature + Savage Roar + Innervate + Savage Roar to kill both taunts and swing through for 18.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Yeah, Druid tends to need a few of the big epics. Having to put the second Force of Nature in there makes it even more expensive that it used to be.

I still disenchant heavily even though I'm getting to a point where I have most of the more-likely-to-use cards. I won't keep anything that's not commonly used in popular decks, most of the time - makes it a little easier to craft the stuff that is used. I had to craft the second Force of Nature for this, and I only recently got a second Sunwalker. But Druid was one of the classes I played a lot with early on, so I had a lot of it.

Eheh the only classes I can build a proper deck with at the moment are Warlock, Priest, Shaman, Paladin and Hunter, I lack several purple (thus, 400 dust cost) cards that are more or less mandatory for the other classes to even think playing them in Ranked.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

not much, i could DE a couple of "bad" legendaries if i really wanted to but that's it.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

The problem I have (pretty much in teh same boat as Worldie) is that DE'ing is ineffective - you reduce your ability by 75% each time, just in case the card you DE turns out to be important in the meta in a week (and lets face it, the meta changes suddenly).

Also, not having many cards to begin with results in t being even more "expensive" to DE, as you trade 4 cards for 1, so your collection gets smaller and smaller (and doing it just to run after the meta and what has been discovered, seems to me.. a fallecious strategy).

Personally, I'm still using my mnage deck from earlier with a few minot alterations over time (I thin) and doing okay for the amount of time I put in, last season I finished at rank 17 (not because I couldn't move up, but because I didn't actually play all that much after I got there)

To be able to be competetive you pretty much have to pay into it to get a lot of cards - I could argue for doing that since I don't have an active WoW sub so I could redirect the montly cost to HS, but I'm not sure if I would actually get enough play out of it compared to wow (decisions decisions)

I dont' get too concerned about the idea that maybe a card will suddenly come into fashion. Some cards are obviously unlikely to see widespread use, others I just don't see being all that popular.

Pirates, for example, are only used in some niche decks with little success - I'd keep the 2/1 Charge and eliminate the rest. Murlocs have some viable builds, but not in the current meta, and they're not a style I like, so after trying once I now only keep the Coldlight Oracle (which has occasional use for Mage and Rogue).

And I'll just go through some classes quickly to show my thinking.

For Druid, I always automatically disenchant Savagery, Bite, and Soul of the Forest (latter could become viable some day, especially after Naxx, but it's a common so I'm not too concerned about getting it back). Paladin, I automatically DE Blessed Champion, Holy Wrath, and all Secrets except Noble Sacrifice. Again, they could be used in soem decks, but they're unlikely to be significant. Rogue, I'll DE Patient Assassin, Headcrack, Master of Disguise, and Kidnapper, because they're all just bad cards.

I do those even if I'm not currently planning to craft anything in particular. And there are many, many more Common cards I'll never keep (just from first two pages: Wisp, Chicken, Corsair, Crab, Secretkeeper, Dragonhawk).

All these little bits of dust add up. If your collection is small, any cards you're not using now or soon are just doing nothing for you.

KysenMurrin wrote:This deck, man. This freaking deck. I'm laughing my ass off here as I shoot on up the ranks.

I wish my results with Ramp would be even nearly as good.

I keep getting slaughtered. Even Priests run rings around me! And since the deck itself is obviously very good and pretty straightforward, it's obvious that the problem is me. I'm bad and I should feel bad and so I do. :(

I've only come across two or three priests, and had trouble with them. Ramp is supposed to be good because of 4 attack minions, but doesn't feel that way.

I think my favourite matchup might actually be Miracle Rogue. That one's just about playing a 4 or 5 health body every turn so they're occupied clearing and using up their damage, then setting up for the burst finish.

Passionario wrote:I can't break out of the rank 12-10 limbo. Tried everything from ramp to handlock to zoo to miracle to shockadin to control warrior, but nothing works.

I don't think it's a good idea to switch a lot. The last few seasons I've been trying to pick one deck and mostly stick to that - you take one you're relatively comfortable with, and play it non-stop so that you learn the ins and outs and your win rate starts to rise. When you stop and move to another deck, you're resetting all that experience and starting over.

The hard part's picking the right deck in the first place, and working out when to make tweaks to it to suit what you're seeing on the ladder. I'm not very good at the latter.

Edit: Not related, but after writing this post I've had something of an epiphany, and decided I'm going to fit a Naturalize into my Druid deck. I think it'll give me an edge in the Druid mirror match (and Druids are everywhere in the top 5 ranks).

It usually goes like this. I start playing a deck and it's the best deck ever. Opponents fall like flies, stars come in a flurry, my Warsong portrait becomes a BGH, the BGH becomes an Ogre... and then I start losing badly. Losing to aggro, to control, to matchups that are supposed to be bad and to ones that are supposed to be good, and, of course, to mirror (which is particularly frustrating, since it's the same deck, except piloted by someone who is clearly a better player than me). I eke out a couple more wins, but each is followed by multiple losses. In the end, I find myself at the start of rank 12, full of misery, frustration and loathing for the deck.

Then I decide to try a different approach, since my current one is clearly not working. I start playing another deck - and guess what, it's the best deck ever. Opponents fall like flies, stars come in a flurry, I start thinking that I should've played this one in the first place... and then the cycle repeats itself.

Finally, I look at the clock, see that it's 2 AM already, and realize that I've just spent several hours with nothing but 50-60 gold and a major headache to show for it.

Have you tried just taking a break when you start to drop back, then coming back in on the same deck?

I get that kind of cycle all the time. I won constantly from Monday to Saturday, then on Saturday afernoon I started losing everything (went from 75% to something like 40%). Sunday I got back to about 50/50, then I started to pull back ahead on Sunday evening. I stuck with the deck, stopped to eat/read/whatever when I was doing badly, and slowly got back into it. It's happened to me with every deck, a big run of wins then some bad luck. Usually it's around when you start hitting the higher ranks and meeting a slightly different mix of players and decks - it takes a while to adapt.

KysenMurrin wrote:Have you tried just taking a break when you start to drop back, then coming back in on the same deck?

It didn't help. Still there, still losing (both games and hope).

KysenMurrin wrote:The last few seasons I've been trying to pick one deck and mostly stick to that - you take one you're relatively comfortable with, and play it non-stop so that you learn the ins and outs and your win rate starts to rise.

How much time does it usually take you to get to that point?

I've played about a couple hundred games with ramp Druid so far, but I don't feel any real improvement.

Not quite sure, to be honest. I've been stalled at the rank 4/5 border for a few days, not sure if I'm improving. I do feel like I improved after the rough patch the first time I hit rank 4, though. Saturday and Sunday were bad, but now I'm consistently 50/50, even as the meta seems to be shifting against me. I'm getting better at beating Druid, I think, but the meta is shifting toward aggro Rogue and Paladin, so my win rate stays down.

I played 250 ranked games in may (according to Hearthstone Tracker), 192 with Shockadin. I made it to rank 1 (and lost four matches at 5 stars :( ) If I had played a hair better and won one of those four matches I'd have made legend, so it's a realistic number of matches to legend, for me at least.

A shockadin game lasts somewhere between 4 and 7 minutes for me, so say 7.5 minutes with requeueing. That's 1500 minutes, or 25 hours, in one month. Oops.

Is there a way that I can save my Hearthstone collect to a format that I can view from my phone? I like theory crafting etc... when I'm away from my PC and saving that time for actually playing. I don't have a huge collection or anything but I do have enough that I can't just remember.

Decided to get my own stats: This month so far I have played 218 games. 9 of those as Shaman, 12 as Mage, and 197 as Druid. Of those games, I've won 125 (57%). I've played Ranked for almost 26 hours so far this month.